Ferenc Gelencsér: „The Hungarian state is falling apart“

Die deutsche Version dieses Interviews gibt es hier.

If you want to understand what „Orbánism“ really means, there is hardly a better person to speak with than Viktor Orbáns liberal opponent in Hungary: Ferenc Gelencsér. The 33-year-old party leader of the liberal Momentum movement is visibly frustrated with the situation in Hungary: even before we sat down for the proper interview, Gelencsér starts directly to explain with examples, analogies and stories how Orbán is shaping Hungary.

He quickly dives into the details, then jumps to another point, mentions names, numbers and anecdotes about all parts of Hungarian life, from the control of the judiciary and the media to the broken health system to the bizarre story of a fence in Budapest. We don’t even get to start with a question, but simply switch on the microphone when Gelencsér is already in the middle of his explanations. It is a long conversation, because Gelencsér seems more like an underground activist in a police state than a classic party leader in parliament.

The following conversation is the long version of Gelencsér’s remarks. The most important impressions from Budapest and the core statements of the interview can also be found here in a report (in German).

Gelencsér: Here’s the thing. I’ve already been to Brussels a couple of times and I often get asked the question: What will happen when AfD in Germany or FPÖ in Austria win? They want to introduce the Orbán model. My answer is that it is a whole package. It’s not like what many foreign people or politicians think or see from the outside. From the outside, it seems like Orbán is fighting for the civility of the country in very populistic ways. But in the last 13 years, pretty much every single political institution has been captured. The state is captured. We do not have an independent jurisdiction, we do not have an independent legislature, we do not have an independent executive. Even the courts are captured, the media is captured, public and private.

Materie: Private and Public?

Yes, every single small paper in the countryside is owned by a firm called KESMA. They pretty much own every single newspaper that people read. Even in the national sport news they do political things! We, Momentum, came into being as a protest movement for a referendum against the 2024 olympic bid. Because we believed that when Hungary would host the Olympic Games, the country would crash. Many economists and political analysts proved us right on that. We managed more than a quarter million signatures against that and the Orbán regime stepped back because they didn’t want to face the outcome. So now, even sports newspapers describe momentum as anti-sport, anti-olympic and therefore anti-Hungarian. Even Turkey has better media pluralism.

That’s worrying.

That’s worrying, yes, but in Turkey they have at least four independent news agencies that have a high percentage of readers. In Hungary, we only have RTL from Germany. Every other channel is owned by some kind of Orbán-oligarch. They captured not just the institutions, but whole sectors. If you have a hotel, chances are someone knocks on your door and tells you „That’s a nice hotel, how much will it cost“. And if you don’t sell, you are going to face, well, challenges, to say the least. You will not be able to work. It has actually happened to many people. They rule over the sector of construction. Have you been to the Castle yet?

Not yet, just at the Parliament.

So at the Castle, they are rebuilding everything that has been bombed in World War II. When I was deputy major, I saw that they were deciding to rebuild the stable, because there was once a stable. I was wondering: How would you use it? And they said: We have absolutely no idea.

For nostalgic reasons maybe?

Yes, maybe. For nostalgic reasons we build things without function. In the meantime, 2.000 teachers just quit their job in the last month. At the moment, we have so few police officers that the fish guards are requested to join the police and support the officers. This state is falling apart. I’m paying my income tax, I’m paying my social security, but the state is not functioning.

How high are the taxes in Hungary?

The income tax is lower than in Austria. I have a huge debate with my friends about that. They live in Austria and pay 44 per cent – but the state is functioning.

I wouldn’t go that far in some areas, but yes, the police is often underpaid, but at least it’s working.

I will give you an example on how our state is not working. I had a bellyache and I went to one of the biggest hospitals in the past. They took my blood sample and … they just gave it to me. Because they had no nurses! They told me: „Please would you find a laboratory and give that blood to it“. So I’m walking there with my blood in my pocket and I was told to undergo an ultrasound check. And they told me that I have cancer. After two days of shock, I went to another, private hospital and they told me I was fine. So I’m paying for my social security – but they don’t spend it on social security! There should be a law that if you pay for it, it should be used for it. And not to rebuild a stable from the past. There’s so much about Orbánism to tell you, and sorry if I’m zig-zagging, but I’ll give you another example: At the moment we have books that have to be covered.

Yes, I’ve seen that, also in Austria people talk about it.

Harry Potter! At the moment, Harry Potter is covered because Dumbledore is gay!

Which is doubly weird, because it isn’t even in the plot.

Yes, you know it only when you watch the sequel. And it’s covered! I used to study history. When you cover a book, chances are you’re going to burn it eventually. So healthcare is broken, freedom of expression is declining rapidly, LGBTIQ people are being threatened. They changed the constitution to say that „A father is a man, a mother is a woman.“

They put the gender roles in the constitution? Now that solves a lot of problems …

Yeah, hooray, everything will be cheaper! In the meantime, we have a 50 % food inflation. The wages are so low that only Bulgaria has lower income rates than Hungary. This country could have been anything. After the fall of communism, we started in a very good position and we had the chance to catch up. Maybe not with Austria, but at least with Slovenia! And always had these issues with other countries: Look at these poor Slovaks, those poor Romanians. If only we had such a low inflation rate as Slovakia! If only we could fight corruption like Romania does!

What does it mean to be a liberal in this situation?

If you ask Viktor Orbán, a liberal is a communist with a degree. He calls his system an illiberal system, but they call the liberals communists. Meanwhile he talks about a „system of national cooperation“, which has some sort of resemblance to what Italy had.

So it remembers you of Mussolini: „We are the people, we work together and who doesn’t cooperate is the enemy.“

When Orbán lost his first election, he declared that „the nation can not be in opposition“. So even 21 years ago he declared who was part of the nation and who isn’t. I was only 12, but that was a clear sign that something was really boiling and that this guy is trouble. And now we’re living in trouble. I really wonder if we will be part of the European Union in 2030.

Why? Because of a referendum? Or because of the fight over EU funding?

The EU doesn’t give a penny do Hungary now, because they know it will be stolen.

If you want to know why the EU is not giving us any funding, I will show you something. This is a treetop walkway – the only thing that is missing is the trees. The major of the town got 60 million Euros from EU funds to build that promenade. The money wasn’t enough to build it though, so he cut all the trees down. It’s the whole system in one picture!

And this is Orbáns dacha. His father used to be a member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party before the regime change. He had a stone mine, and when his people rose to power – tada! – the state was buying the stones from his father. That’s what money like that can build.

And this is a stadium in Budapest. The promise was that they would build a student village, a huge campus, like in Paris. It should have hosted 30.000 students, which would also have brought houses down. They almost bought the University, the Fudan University. It’s not a bad University, but the main goal of it is the spread of Maoism and chinese values. And we live in a society where communism is the biggest swearword to use, so the outrage was huge. But they still built the stadium!

So that’s why the EU doesn’t want to give money to Hungary. And Orbán thinks about a life after the EU. He thinks we don’t need the EU funds, we don’t need the bureaucrats or „Brusselites“, whatever that may be. They are causing the high prices, they want to force their gender views on the old Hungarians, and so on. They are using exactly the same tactics that they used in the communist era: They operate on fear. People remember that they had to share their flats after the war, because everything was destroyed. And now they say „The opposition want migrants to share your home.“

And if you say „No, that’s not what we mean“, you can’t get any space in the media.

Yes, but it’s not just the media. It’s also on Facebook and many Social Platforms. We have a system of „proxy media“: The government gives money to institutes to promote conservative values, and they give money to so-called megaphones. And these megaphones spent the most money on political advertising in Europe. Last year, without an election! Can you imagine that? You cannot unsee that – you get on Facebook, and no matter what you follow, you will see only this. These sites will have 50.000 followers, get blocked and start again with fresh money. And then they tell the people that we want Hungarians in your home, that we want troupes in Ukraine and that we are the reason for high inflation. We have two politicians in the European Parliament that are the reason for inflation because of the sanctions, but then they vote for the sanctions themselves while they say „No to sanctions“. I mean, come on!

And you can’t hear the other side, right? I guess you have your own budget for Facebook Ads, but that gets you only that far.

We spend less than 10.000 Euros a month on Facebook. But only the proxy Facebook Pages spend millions of Euros a month. And that doesn’t even include Fidesz or the government. Another example: At the moment, wherever you go you see billboards that say „Warmongers“ with five faces. There is Momentum and the other party leaders. They are using government funds for Fake News about the opposition, like if you vote for us, you have to go to war.

So it’s not a liberal democracy anymore, because you can’t voice any idea.

Yes, and that’s what I tell my Austrian friends. You don’t want a system like this! My main issue with Fidesz is that what it’s doing is intellectual destruction. What happens to the mind of a country when you do that?

But is the youth also behind Fidesz? Because as I see it, young people tend to see that there’s more to life, also via the internet.

That might be, but you will be aware that the young generation does not vote. They feel like „Our vote won’t count, I’m just one person“, and that way we lose tens of thousands of people. But we also have another problem with this generation: We had a protest quite a while ago. If you go to the castle, there is a fence. At a student protest, we were dismantling the fence, because there is no legal basis for that. Some MPs of ours and many people were taken into custody. We were waiting for the young people the whole night and I had a chance to talk to the students. And not one of them was planning to study in Hungary. Everyone is leaving the country! Many people had the opportunity to travel, to walk abroad, to visit Brussels. I’m one of these people. But I have more in common with people my age in Copenhagen than with elderly people in my country.

A political scientist I talked to told me that this might be Orbáns plan: If everyone who wants to live differently leaves the country and the people that stay don’t speak English, no one knows about the alternative.

It could be a plan, but a short-sighted one. If only the least educated people stay here, I’m quite sure that in 20 to 30 years half of the people will be unemployed. The AI boom, robotics and all the IT jobs is going to mean that many jobs of today won’t exist. And if you have an uneducated society, people will struggle to find a job. At the moment, there’s a compulsory class in school: You can either study religion or ethics. I spoke up in the parliament and asked: Why aren’t we teaching the kids IT? I studied religion on my own, in my free time, and I’m happy that I did even though it wasn’t compulsory. But now I see that what the young people need is IT. They won’t get a job if they don’t understand technology.

On your website, you talk about a „Revenge Law“ that is discussed now. What is that about?

There was an ongoing protest by students and teachers for more than a year now. There were marches for better education in Budapest to show that teachers are underpaid and lack support. But the solution of the government wasn’t to increase payments, but to punish those who teach. If you are a teacher, your phone, your laptop or your e-mails can be checked. To see what you think about the system – because you are part of the system! Education belongs to the interior minister!

So you don’t have an education ministry?

No, this is all under the ministry of internal affairs. Instead of trying to get more teachers in the system, they try to squeeze those we have. They are so underpaid, it’s a lot of work for not a lot of money. And now, they get forced to work more, the hours can get increased and teachers and whole classes can get relocated. It’s a revenge against teachers because they were protesting better education. And instead of hearing them out, they punished their public outcry.

And you can’t change anything? You don’t have power in the parliament to do something against that?

Mr. Orbán pretty much emptied the parliament, there are no debates anymore. When you want to vote for a resolution, you first have to go to the commission of law-making, where 99 % of what we propose will never make it to parliament.

Also in Austria, what is up for debate in the parliamentary sessions is de facto decided by the government majority.

We realise that the decisions are not made in parliament anymore. And for the past three years, there has been a fence around Orbáns Castle. So there is no space for independent media to ask politicians about their policies, no one is allowed in this area. But it’s a public area, it’s a street. So sometimes, when we go to the office, we dismantle the fence, we destroy it. So at the moment, we are being charged for disturbing the peace. Organised. Armed even! Because the things we used to dismantle the fence are considered weapons by the government. And the fourth charge is the funniest part: We disturbed the functioning of the road. How could there even be cars if there’s a fence around?

What happened after you took down the fence?

One of my colleagues was taken into custody last time. Sometimes, they used pepper spray on us. I was also taken by policemen. I told them „I’m a member of parliament, you cannot even touch me“, at least by law. But I heard them say „Bring him there so the media can’t see him“. They nearly broke my arm. This is how Momentum tries to change something, the other opposition parties have given up the fight.

You started as a protest movement against a stadium, and now you are a liberal party. What is your counter-model to Orbánism?

The big picture is: Europe will become an empire or it will fall. China is an empire, a whole civilisation, India is on its way too. The US is not what it used to be, but it’s still a superpower. Russia? We’ll see. But for European states, even Germany, their relative power is relatively low. But if we could build an European federation with half a billion people with the best purchasing power in the world – with two nations with extremely well equipped armies –, Europe could be the future. But time is running out. And I’m a bit frustrated about it. This chance is just there, and for some reason we don’t do it! We need a strong European Union, and we can’t go back to the 30s of the last century.

How do you see the threat of the FPÖ or the AfD?

I’m not an expert in your politics, but I know that the trend is worrying, to say the least. The aim of these parties is just so small. As a European in my 30s I think those are short-sighted politicians that want to feel big, but in reality, they are really small. I mean, we had a parliamentary session to block Sweden from NATO because of Turkey. What about sovereignty? „We are a sovereign state and we won’t do what Brussels says …“

„… but we will do what Erdogan says!“

Yes, exactly. It’s mind-blowing. As Momentum, we want to join the project of European Union and renew and restrengthen our position within the EU and NATO. Because right now, Orbán is fighting our allies, even though they fund and protect us. If it would be up to me, up to Momentum, we would turn this state into the future. Because it sounds hard, but this state is satisfying only the elderly people. Our society looks like this (showing a pyramid with his hands). So many people are voting for a future they won’t live to see. To be frank, I do believe that it’s my grandparents‘ and my parents‘ generations‘ fault that they caused climate change that I have to live in.

It’s a generational conflict about the future.

Yes. But there are good examples to the contrary. They saved 3 % of their GDP through E-government. In Estonia, you can do pretty much everything online besides getting married, getting divorced or buying a flat. And this is not the future – this is the present! And 3 % of the GDP is a lot! We could spend it on education, we could spend it on healthcare. We wouldn’t have to live in a country where we have to carry our own blood samples around. It isn’t even ridiculous, it’s outrageous! I want children to study things that help them to succeed in life. So what we want to offer? A functioning state.The VAT is 27 %. Imagine working 100 hours, getting 66 % of that as your income and paying another 27 % just via VAT.

This tax is even higher than in Austria, by the way.

We have 53 forms of taxes. And we want a country where, for at least 24 hours, nobody changes the laws. For example: Last July, there was a huge outrage about KOTA, the taxation form that self-employed people use. They had a very easy way to pay for their taxes and their social securities. And one day, the minister said it will need a reform. Four days later, they announced: „Chances are we are going to change it“. And the next day, in a national assembly session, they just cut the law. Imagine that in the middle of the year, when you’re planning ahead what you have to pay in taxes, in just five days everything changes!

So you can’t plan ahead if you’re self-employed?

In this country, you just can’t plan ahead, because there is no rule of law. There is no security in the laws, everything can change in a minute. We have 53 different types of taxes even though we have the second lowest income in the EU. The great promise after the regime change and the fall of the European Union was that you finally could open your own café in something like Mariahilfer Straße.

And that’s not even a big standard.

That’s nothing! And that’s what Momentum offers: We want prestige. We want Hungary to be part of the EU, of NATO, to strengthen these alliances. We want the government to spend the taxes on the people. We want security for the people to be able to plan ahead. So you can see your future and not live day-by-day, week-by-week. So they don’t have to leave the country if they want to do what they want.

That might be the problem with big ideas and complex answers. If smart people are in a place where there are not a lot of chances, where there’s no functioning infrastructure, they leave. They leave for the big cities and move from the countryside, for example. And they leave behind only those satisfied with the Status Quo. And in Hungary, basically the whole country is „the countryside“, in that analogy. Would you agree to that?

I agree with the argument about complex answers. Before the election, Orbán was giving away a 13th month pension. My father was like „Oh, wow, money comes from the house“. And I said „Imagine you wouldn’t need it, because your monthly pay is enough!“

But it’s free money. We have the same in Austria, a lot of helicopter money was spent during the pandemic or since inflation rate has double-digits.

But there is no free money! And that’s the same with interest in state bonds: We are paying that, and no one gets it! And another thing that annoys me: When I studied in Paris, a classmate in Germany asked where I was from. I said Hungary, and then she asked me „What are you doing here? You hate us!“ – so this is how people see us. And that’s a shame.

You can’t reduce a people to its government. We also have issues with our image in other countries, especially in foreign policy matters.

But just to mention a positive thing about Austria: I want to have a government where people step down. Kurz stepped down. But I can’t remember the last time when a minister stepped down because they did something wrong. Take Judit Varga for example: As a minister of justice, she signed a law that made it possible to tape journalists and some of our party members. And just like that, she is now heading the Fidesz list for the European elections next year.

Out of sight, out of mind.

I want to live in a country in which the legislative, the jurisdiction and the executive branches are separated and work. When you are a politician and you steal, you get punished. Where if you are a politician, you are not above the law.

That’s the key liberal idea since many hundreds of years, and you still don’t have it?

Yes. And I want a world where nobody tells me what to think, whom to love and how to be a part of the nation. I am part of the nation! I have a wife, but I have a lot of friends in the LGBTIQ-community, and they feel threatened. Why would you attack them? They are citizens of this nation, they pay their taxes. They deserve rights. But in Hungary, people do not have equal rights.

It’s a shame that in 2023 you still have to fight for that. That’s … a very depressing point to end on, don’t you think?

If you want an optimistic sentence to end on, I want to say this: Whenever you throw up a stone, eventually it’s going to come down. We survived the Ottomans, the Russians, Genghis Khan. Whatever has a beginning also has an ending. It’s just the question who will pick up the parts when it ends. And I think it will be our generation.